507 - Principles of Lutheran Theology

Principles of Lutheran Theology
By Carl E. Braaten
Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1983. 144 pp. $8.95.

At whatever level, local or broader, this slim book offers ready substance for today's interconfessional dialogue and convergence-bound ecumenical thinking. Author Braaten (at Chicago's Lutheran School of Theology for two decades) has the resources at hand and the current situation in mind as he distills the scope of Lutheran theology to seven principles: the canonical, the confessional, the ecumenical, the christocentric, the sacramental, the law/Gospel, and the two kingdoms. Calling this his first specifically Lutheran book, Braaten gives it an ecumenical openness. His breadth allows no "phony wall of separation" between church and state to exempt faith from action. In fact, his boiled down seven principles lead him to conclude that "the kingdom of God is the starting point and organizing principle for systematic theology" (p. 138). The basis? Every new era in the churches of the Reformation, he notes, "has been invariably triggered by a revival of biblical study" (p. 16). As today.

E. Theodore Bachmann
Princeton Junction, N.J.